Tag: Thomas Edison

Reappreciating Applied Imagination

Hello again Humantific readers. Inspired by a reoccurring question seen in one of the LinkedIn Design Thinking discussion groups regarding “SCAMPER” we decided to make this the focus of this week’s post. Since many of our readers/clients are innovation initiative leaders we thought it might be useful to you if we share a somewhat lost story regarding this thinking related subject.

At Humantific we recognize SCAMPER as a basic idea prompting technique, (not a method) with a long history that seems to be not well understood in some communities of practice today.

SCAMPER originates in the Applied Creativity community (*1), not the design or design thinking communities. For those who might not know these are two very different communities of knowledge…with very different timelines, heroes, orientation to challenges and methodology histories. While many parallels exist, one is certainly not interchangeable with the other…….

The Edison Effect

It might come as a surprise to some unfamiliar with Osborn’s work or that of the various other United States based CPS/Applied Creavity pioneers but the early orientation of this community can be described as significantly influenced by the Edison Effect….as in Thomas Edison (1847-1931). Without getting into the later criticism leveled at Edison we can acknowledge for the purposes of this post that he was a prolific, highly influential legendary American Inventor…..